Did an AI Paint That?

pcmag.com:

“My kid could paint that” is a frequent rejoinder to art that viewers struggle understand. But “my computer could paint that” may become the challenge to art that has secured its status as a masterpiece. 

DALL-E 2(Opens in a new window), an OpenAI-created system that translates images into art, has taken over social media, emphasis on "media." The AI and its unrelated copycat, craiyon(Opens in a new window), have been used to create such works as “an ancient Egyptian mural of an Egyptian animal god using a computer” and “a medieval painting of people wearing VR headsets.”

DALL-E 2 has been available to a select few who have moved up from its waitlist, and craiyon is open to the public. The work that has been produced via these programs has caught the attention of many, including Tidio, which decided to pose some questions(Opens in a new window) about it to 842 people on art, AI, and technology subreddits (scroll down for the full infographic).

Tidio showed several images to its audience and asked of each: Did AI make this or did an artist? A surrealist painting from the 80s was judged as painted by a human by 68% of people surveyed—while a DALL·E 2 creation was deemed human-made by 73%. Nine percent of those surveyed said it was easy for them to tell whether AI or a human was behind an artwork, but Tidio pointed out that not all of those people were correct in their assessments of the art they were shown. 

But since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we should note that the artist-versus-AI debate doesn’t matter to everyone. Almost 67% said AI-generated images are still a form of art. The positives they associated with AI-generated art are an easy conceptualization of ideas (25%), a good source of inspiration (24%), a